this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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Nope. There is no non-nuclear weapon device on earth capable of generating a weaponizable EMP.*
While power distribution systems can create smaller EM Pulses, they're way too small and weak to do much damage to anything that isn't wired directly to it. It could fuck up your computer, but only if it's plugged into the wall. It could maybe make some random wireless electronics act weird, too, but not something like these robots.
Oh, interesting. I probably heard my thing from some shitty online sci fi story, because I went through a phase where I was super into absolute garbage short sci fi stories online.
The US military claims to have one in the CHAMP missile, using high power microwaves.
Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project - Wikipedia
So, CHAMP is an HPM weapon, which is not technically the same thing as an EMP. High Power Microwave weapons can also mess up electronics in the same way as an EMP, but they use a very specific chunk of the EM spectrum and are highly directional. Neat tech, but obviously upsetting in the context of being military technology.
CHAMP's follow-up successor HiJENKS is vaporware and since a demonstration in 2013, the ground-based version of CHAMP hasn't really gone anywhere. It was this massive 6m thing and HiJENKS was supposed to be the route to shrinking the tech I think. Right now it's packaged as a cruise missile, and is seemingly being deployed as an alternative to deploying nuclear weapons. I feel like that's pretty much just as much unobtainable as a nuke.
I dunno, maybe if we're all fighting the SkynetGPT paperclip maximizer after it starts building an army of infinite robot dogs, it'll come in handy?